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[Andir]

So I've been using Disktrix Ultimate Defrag on my Game PC (the free one, now ver. 1.72) for what seems... forever.  Today I ran across a very serious problem with it though:

A 6.92 GB file.  ("Installer Tome 1.MPQE" from the Starcraft II install demo if it matters)

Setting that file to archive and setting the rest of the disk to performance, I found that UD kept moving one part of the file around and never finalized it's position.  It kept moving it and increasing the time to complete.  No matter how many times I'd restart the app, it climbed it's way up to 10+ hours after an hour of defrag and it never once fixed that one file.  It kept moving other files that were already defragged, then would move the big file chunk and then put it back where it was.

Has anyone here found anything like Ultimate Defrag that works reliably with extremely large files?

[RedKing]

How big's the HD, and how much free space is there? I'm wondering if it simply can't find a big enough chunk of free space to move the fragment, so it tries juggling other files to free up more space but can't.

[Andir]

It's a 200 GB drive, and It's a fresh XP install.  22GB used, 163 GB Free.  There's plenty of space free, but it keeps moving the file back and forth between two spots.

[eerr]

is the file at least in large chunks?

[Andir]

It is... which isn't so bad.  The only way I know to get around it would be to put the files on one of my other computers, consolidate my files and move it back... but it's not really that important.

I was mainly looking to see if anyone knew about an alternative defrag software that does it as well as Ultimate but doesn't have the "large file" bug I seem to be running into.

[Virex]

The guys at My defrag may have scripts for this (or My Defrag doesn't chug on large files in the first place, never tried that)

[Andir]

The guys at My defrag may have scripts for this (or My Defrag doesn't chug on large files in the first place, never tried that)

Yeah, it actually skips those two files as well:

Code: [Select]

Total disk space:     200,038,776,832 bytes          186.3006 GigaBytes
Unfragmented items:    21,509,869,568 bytes            22,331 items
Fragmented items:              20,480 bytes                 2 items
Gaps:                 176,403,566,592 bytes               266 gaps
Average gap:              663,171,072 bytes
Median gap:                   606,208 bytes
Biggest gap:           88,454,488,064 bytes
(Edit: It looks like it's counting them as "Unfragmented" in the report...)

It was worth the shot though... this looks like an interesting program.  Thanks!

[eerr]

It's probably trying to put that big file near the beginning of the drive because of how much you use it.

or maybe some flashdrive-like file moving shenanigans.

[Virex]

It's probably trying to put that big file near the beginning of the drive because of how much you use it.

or maybe some flashdrive-like file moving shenanigans.

If that's the case you could try dumping all files at the back of the disk and then optimize it (moving everything to the front). Would be quite slow though.

[Andir]

I marked the installation folder (with those files in it) for archival.  Ultimate places archive files near the center of the disk and put's high performance files on the edge.  I want to move that file to the inner track so that's the only one I have selected for archive.

If it's trying to move it to an outer ring, it's doing it wrong.

If that's the case you could try dumping all files at the back of the disk and then optimize it (moving everything to the front). Would be quite slow though.

That may be my only choice, but I'd hate to have to do this a lot if I run into large files in the future... thus, looking for an alternative.

[eerr]

Alternative: consider that the file isn't being defragmented because the file shouldn't be defragmented
Alternative: somehow echo the file through win scp and watch as the file ends up in parts anyway.

[Andir]

I actually found out the defrag API in Windows was trying to write said file to a bad cluster on the disk and was, of course, not telling me any of that information.  I had to use the sysinternals Contig with /v on the folder to get an error number... a bad cluster.

Looks like I need to finally retire this 200GB drive.  (I ran a full cluster check RIGHT before running the original defrag so I didn't think there would be another one so soon.)